Russian Religion

I originally had the idea for this post a week ago but then my family came to visit a day earlier than I thought they were, thus throwing my life into a wonderfully hilarious and delicious disarray for five days.

I was inspired to write something about religion after our last Cultural Wednesday activity which was, in quite a different tack to previous arty endeavours, a visit to the only large tourist attraction here that is still a functioning church: Kazan Cathedral. I was immediately struck with the soberness of the place as I haphazardly covered my hair with a scarf before going in, something I have never before had to do. This feeling was reinforced by the impressively long queue, made up of young and old people alike, leading up to an icon on the altar.

For those of you who are unaware, the largest religion in Russia is Orthodox Christianity, a religion to which 75% of the population belong and one that was illegal, along with all others, for the majority of the 20th century. In 1932 Kazan Cathedral was transformed into the pro-Marxist "Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism".

Anyone who knows me knows that I am an atheist and occasionally an extremely vocal one at that. Usually my problem with religion stems from the fact that I see it as something exclusive and divisive, a tool used by many to excuse discrimination. I often think that religion should be separated as much as possible from mainstream society and kept as something extremely private. However, the sombreness of my visit to this cathedral made me truly think about the weight of my words in a way I unfortunately don't a lot of the time.

Having grown up in multicultural London, if you told me your were Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim or Jewish I would think "Wow how interesting, I would love to find out more about that", but if you told me your were Christian my reaction would be "they must be a bit of a weirdo". Yet if I heard someone speak the way I often have about Christianity I would instinctively want to accuse them of racism.

I claim to be opposed to religion because it breeds narrow-mindedness but all that attitude does is in turn make me closed-minded to vast groups of people and prevents me from truly seeking to understand them.

Ultimately I want to live in a world where people are free to believe what they choose and a world without religion is not somewhere where this would be possible.

 Here endeth my rant.